East Europe Censorship News

The curator of a Russian museum says he was fired for refusing to censor an exhibition which criticises the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games.

Marat Guelman was dismissed as director of the Perm Museum of Contemporary Art after backing the collection, which portrays a dark side of Russia. The work, entitled Welcome Sochi 2014 , was created by artist Vasily Slonov and features the Olympic rings as nooses and loops of barbed wire, bloody axes, grenades and a evil looking caricature of Joseph Stalin in a polar bear suit.

Guelman said that he had been sacked by minister of culture Igor Gladnev:

Gladnev just called me and confirmed the fact of my dismissal. The Ministry of Culture, it seems, has confused its role with that of the FSB [the former KGB].

I had hoped that censorship was impossible and illegal.

The new trend of Russian politics is to divide everyone into groups of 'us' and 'them' and the small liberal islands are getting even smaller.

After numerous Russian Company of Heroes 2 players expressed issues with the game's portrayal of the Soviet Union in World War II, the game's distributor, 1C-SoftClub, has withdrawn the game from sale.

The game publisher Sega, has also released a statement to GameSpot:

Sega and Relic are aware of the press stories circulating concerning Company of Heroes 2 and the historical context of the game from a Russian perspective.

At this time we cannot offer any further comment, however we are taking this issue very seriously and are investigating these concerns thoroughly with all relevant partners.

Some gamers have taken issue with Company of Heroes 2 for supposed Western bias. A Change.org petition has been launched calling on Valve to remove the game from Steam to protect the young people from that propaganda.

US rock group Bloodhound Gang has been banned from a Russian music festival in Odessa after a band member stuffed the Russian flag into his underpants on stage.

Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky described the band as idiots and added :

I spoke to the Krasnodar region authorities. Bloodhound Gang is packing their suitcases,

Bass player Jared Hasselhoff was seen in a video pushing the flag into the front of his pants and pulling them out of the back. Don't tell Putin, Hasselhoff said to applause as he grabbed a Russian flag from the wall behind and performed the stunt.

Local media reports later said that Hasselhoff had been questioned by police. The head of Russia's Investigations Committee, Vladimir Markin, said his department was prepared to pursue criminal charges against all those involved if prosecutors decided there was a case.

Hasselhoff later apologised for the stunt.

Russia's internet censors, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications has banned Japanese anime from the genre hentai . Censors claim it to be child pornography.

The censor department was not sure whether to define hentai as child pornography and so consulted external analysts. One such analyst claimed that these animated films exploit interest to sex often in perverted form , as well as there is no storyline and any cultural or historical value . Also according to experts all characters are presented as minors, who participate in pornographic scenes .

The internet censor will now demand that websites and web hosting companies remove all such content.

Hentai is a genre of the Japanese animation (anime) containing erotic or pornographic scenes. Characters are typically drawn with few features and rather indeterminate ages.

Veteran Russian directors Karen Shakhnazarov and Marlen Khutsiyev have been included in a working group charged with developing a morality code for the Russian film industry, an idea originally suggested by President Vladimir Putin. The working group was formed under the auspices of the Russian Union of Filmmakers.

Putin suggested that it could improve the quality of local films and curb violence on Russian screens. More recently, he gave the example of the US Hays code, the restrictive censorship rules used by the U.S. film industry from 1930 to 1968. Rinat Davletyarov, head of the Russian guild of producers, supported his president claiming that the Hays Code coincided with Hollywood's Golden Age.

Meanwhile director Andrei Proshkin, who heads KinoSoyuz, an alternative union of filmmakers, ridiculed the idea, adding that the existing legislation is sufficient to deal with ethical issues.

The deadline set by Putin for developing the morality code is Oct. 1, 2013.

Russia's lower house of parliament, the Duma, has passed a law imposing heavy fines for providing information about homosexuality to people under 18.

The measure was passed unanimously and will become law when approved by the upper house and President Vladimir Putin, a virtual formality.

Under the new law, private individuals promoting homosexual behaviour among minors face fines of up to 5,000 roubles (£100; $155) while officials risk paying 10 times that amount. Businesses and schools could be fined up to 500,000 roubles.

A recent poll found that nearly half of Russians believe that the gay and lesbian community should not enjoy the same rights as other citizens.

Update: Signed into law

1st July 2013. See  article from  guardian.co.uk

Russia s president, Vladimir Putin , has signed into law a measure that stigmatises gay people and bans giving children any information about homosexuality.

Russian state television has pulled a show over a joke about President Vladimir Putin's surprise divorce announcement..

The youth-oriented television show called The Social Network recorded a satirical item about Putin putting up a profile on an online dating site. The programme's co-host Vladislav Sorokin wrote on Facebook:

We made a video item about photos of Putin for mamba.ru (dating site). They took the whole programme, all of it, off air entirely.

We'll work till our contract ends on June 30 and then so long.

The Russian Duma has passed a second reading of a repressive blasphemy law. The legislation has been softened, but still represents a significant ramping up of punishments compared to existing laws.

The second reading was approved overwhelmingly, with 304 Duma deputies voting for, only 4 against and 1 abstention. Under the revised bill, Russians would face a year in jail for intentional and public displays that cause offense to religious sensibilities, down from three in the previous draft; desecrating religious sites and paraphernalia would be punishable by up to three years in jail, down from five.

The bill covers offence to all of Russia's major religions, not just Orthodox Christianity. It could be passed in its third and final reading as early as this week. It is expected to come into force sometime this year.

Communist deputy Oleg Smoli pointed out some of the dangers:

An offense to religious sensibilities is a term that defies definition. A radical believer could find offense in expressions of other people's faith, or atheism.

Sergey Mironov said:

We are happy that the proposal has been scaled back from covering all religious offense, to deliberate acts. But we are still not sure that it can be stretched to indict many Russians, even those who did not set out to offend anyone.

Update: Signed into law by the president

9th July 2013. See  article from  indexoncensorship.org

President Vladimir Putin has signed the new law amending the Russian Criminal Code and providing for up to one year in prison for insult to religious feelings of believers.

Azerbaijan's parliament has legalized more repressive Internet controls in a move the country's opposition groups fear could be used to curb online dissent.

The parliament on voted on May 14 to make online libel and abuse criminal offences.

The new law allows for cases of slander deemed to be particularly serious to be punishable by up to three years in jail. The previous maximum sentence was 15 days.

A test-case brought by Google to challenge Russian internet censorship has failed.

The case related to a video clip uploaded to Google-owned YouTube, which portrayed, using a blunt razorblade and fake blood, a woman cutting her wrists.

Russian regulators demanded the clip be removed, saying it provided information about how to kill oneself. Google complied, but filed an appeal, which has now been rejected by a Moscow court.

Google argued the clip was intended as entertainment rather than to promote actual suicide. In response to the ruling, Google said:

We do not believe the goal of the law was to limit access to videos that are clearly intended to entertain viewers.

The clip, entitled Video lesson on how to cut your veins , was deemed by Russian regulators to break strict new rules on web content thought to be harmful to children.

Perhaps it is relevant to note that the UK film censors of the BBFC used to cut sight of a particularly effective method of cutting veins when it was felt that not many people knew of this. The policy has now been adapted after the technique became more well known.

Stanislav Govorukhin, head of the Russian parliament's committee on culture has said that books containing swear words should be sold in plain covers displaying warnings, just like pornography:

We should consider selling such literature in cellophane covers like pornographic publications, with the warning -- Caution - uncensored language.

President Vladimir Putin recently signed on a law making the use of obscene language by media outlets punishable by fines.

Russian MPs have given initial approval to an anti-blasphemy law with extreme jail terms or fines for anyone found guilty of offending religious feelings.

The bill was drafted last year after the punk band Pussy Riot performed a protest song against President Vladimir Putin in Moscow's main cathedral.

The bill says blasphemy could incur up to three years in jail or a fine of up to 300,000 roubles ($9,700). It was passed by the Duma - Russia's lower house - in a first reading on Tuesday. To become law it has to pass two more readings in the Duma, then a vote in the upper house.

The text refers to offences against religions that are an integral part of Russia's historical inheritance - implying that it covers Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism.

Human rights activists and some critics of the new anti-blasphemy bill say its wording is too vague and could lead to unjustified prosecutions. Some human rights activists warned that insults to believers might include the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution or the Big Bang theory about the universe.

Russian media outlets now face fines of about $6,300 for strong language, the Kremlin announced.

The law also mandated individuals found distributing any media that contains 'obscene' language will be fined $95 while officials will be given fines of $634, The Moscow Times reported.

However, the law does not say what words or phrases are banned. Sergei Zheleznyak, a deputy from the ruling United Russia party and a co-author of the bill, said adding such a list would have been senseless.

The bill, claimed to be about protecting children, faced little opposition in both the Duma and the Federation Council.

In what may be the first such instance in Kazakhstan, a court has ordered religious literature to be destroyed. A total of 121 books confiscated from a Baptist, Vyacheslav Cherkasov, were ordered destroyed in the northern Akmola Region, according to the verdict seen by Forum 18 News Service. The books comprise Bibles, Children's Bibles, and other books and leaflets on the Christian faith, mainly in the Kazakh language.

Cherkasov was also fined one month's average wage. If he loses his appeal, court executors will carry out the destruction. A Justice Ministry official in the capital Astana told Forum 18 that most likely the books would be burnt .

A state Agency of Religious Affairs (ARA) official told Forum 18 that I'm not interested in whether court executors are bothered by having to destroy religious literature .

Local Council of Churches Baptists told Forum 18 that we were shocked - this is sacrilege and illegality .

Human rights defender Yevgeni Zhovtis of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and the Rule of Law sounded distressed, telling Forum 18 that this is terrible, terrible . Religious literature is frequently confiscated, and the state appears committed to using censorship and other freedom of religion or belief violations as a means to control society.

Lawyers for three members of the feminist protest group Pussy Riot are contesting their convictions in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

The complaint filed on Wednesday alleges that the group's conviction violates four articles of the European Convention on Human Rights guaranteeing freedom of speech, the right to liberty and security, the prohibition of torture and the right to a fair trial.

Update: Released

24th December 2013. From Amnesty International newsletter

Late last week, Russia announced that a new Amnesty Law will see many prisoners of conscience released. Among those due to be reunited with their families are singers from the punk band, Pussy Riot, who have been serving a two-year sentence for Hooliganism , and the Greenpeace Arctic 30 -- a group of environmental activists detained in September this year.

The Amnesty Law will not erase the criminal records of those wrongfully convicted, but is a step in the right direction and will no doubt benefit many victims of injustice.

Russia's Safe Internet League is set to impose a walled garden of just half a million sites selected by the authorities on a trial set of internet users.

The Safe Internet League has announced that they had secured an agreement between itself, the governor of the Kostroma Region and all 29 internet services' providers that work there to conduct the experiment dubbed Clean Internet .

The experiment will start in February once providers change their user agreements so that subscribers will only have access to a so called white list of web-sites approved by the league's censors. Those who wish to venture beyond the 500,000 approved websites will have to sign an additional agreement stating that they are doing so at their own risk.

The initiative would most likely bar Kostroma victims from visiting half of all Russian web-sites, and a far larger proportion of international sites.

League censors say that web-site owners would have to file requests to list their resources among the safe content and such a move would happen only after censors check into the application. If they find pornography, violence, extremism or other illicit or illegal content on the site it will be excluded from the white list forever.

The head of the unregistered Pirate Party of Russia, Pavel Rassudov, said the Safe Internet experiment was pure censorship and violated the Russian Constitution that guarantees the right to information access. He also pointed out that the Safe Internet League's monopoly on censorship decisions seemed strange and creating a broader panel for the purpose would be more appropriate.

An executive from the Foundation for Development of Internet Technologies and Infrastructure, Matvey Alekseyev, also said that it was not clear who granted the league's experts the right to dictate their understanding of safety to ordinary internet users.

A new law in Moldova introduces punitive measures against media censorship and deliberate obstruction of mass-media activity.

The bill also makes a specific reference to a ban of public media censorship, involving forced distortion of a media product, limitation to spreading information of public interest, and other illegal actions meant to restrict information dissemination.

The draft is intended to complement the law on freedom of expression, which came into effect in 2010 and bans censorship but does not define any punitive measures.

According to the new regulations, which were given the green light last month and approved by the government, censorship fines up to 1,250 euros, and up to 600 euros for obstruction of media activity, will be imposed. At the same time, those who hold public offices and break this law could lose the right to hold public positions for up to four years.

A report released on Friday by Index on Censorship details the harsh response of the authoritarian government in Belarus after it realised its policy of promoting internet expansion had provided a platform for online dissent in Europe's last dictatorship. Belarus: Pulling the Plug identifies the ways President Lukashenko is now scrambling to restrict online freedom of expression in a country that has one of the worst human rights record in the world.

Andrei Aliaksandrau, Index's Belarus programme manager, said:

Alexander Lukashenko has significantly expanded his government's control over the internet in the last two years. Few people in Belarus realise the level of state surveillance now being carried out by Lukashenko's security services. This poses a huge threat to internet activists in Belarus. The threat of a three year prison sentence for libel against online journalist Andrzej Poczobut shows this threat is real.

The regime is using sophisticated digital methods to curtail free speech made possible by new technologies including:

• Web filters: Index on Censorship tested the WiFi at locations across Belarus including the Institute of Journalism of the Belarus State University in Minsk which filtered five of the major independent websites
• Surveillance techniques which allow the state to intercept all online traffic
• The removal of secure access to particular websites including Facebook to potentially compromise users' logins during election periods
• The creation of fake versions of independent websites (zapraudu.info, nn.by, charter97.org) to create 'clone sites' with out of date news -- and DNS re-routing.

The threat to online freedom also comes from long-established methods the regime uses to chill free speech including: the restrictive media law of 2008, criminal libel laws and using unrelated laws such as 'petty hooliganism' to silence opinion with impunity.

The paper reports that the government of Belarus is one of the first to use distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) to collapse the servers of opposition websites such as charter97.org.

Mike Harris, Head of Advocacy at Index on Censorship said:

State surveillance is yet another way that Lukashenko is compromising freedom of expression in Belarus. Index calls on the government to end online surveillance, release political prisoners and support its citizens' rights to free expression. The European Union must also act to stop the export of surveillance technology to places like Belarus.

The report recommends that the European Commission supports the parliamentary motion tabled by Marietje Schaake MEP calling for a bar on the export of surveillance equipment to authoritarian states.